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WRC teams angry over timing and scoring issues at Monte Carlo

Jari-Matti Latvala charges through the snow in his Volkswagen Polo R WRC on Wednesday. Photo by LAT PHOTOGRAPHIC

The opening leg of the Monte Carlo Rally on Wednesday was thrown into confusion when sport's new timing supplier failed to confirm who was leading the opening round of the World Rally Championship.

Spanish firm Sistemas Integrales de Telecomunicacion took over the timing of the WRC at the start of the season and incurred the wrath of the teams after a string of problems, which included failing to supply split times and reporting Sebastien Loeb as stopping in a first-stage emergency when he was, in fact, on his way to the second-fastest time.

The WRC teams pulled no punches when talking about the timing issues.

“It's completely unacceptable what we have seen today," said Volkswagen Motorsport team principal Jost Capito. "The FIA expects the manufacturers and the teams to be properly prepared, and they are charging a high entry fee -- the least you can expect is the proper timing.

"And it's not just the timing, it's security too. The FIA is pushing so much on safety, I don't know how they can run stages where the safety system is not working, where it shows up on the screen that there is an emergency, yet the car is moving. If there is a real emergency, then what will happen? I think this is completely irresponsible.”

The teams were forced to do the timing and calculations themselves at the end of the day, preparing spreadsheets and calling each other to confirm the times of their crews before deciding on a classification.

“There are simple things where we don't need a revolution, simple things like this [timing and tracking]," said Sebastien Ogier's co-driver, Julien Ingrassia. "It seems the big improvement in the timing and tracking for this year is that we don't have any big clocks at the start of the stage. We are supposed to be going forward, but sometimes we are going back to the past.”

FIA rally director Jarmo Mahonen said that the governing body is looking at the issues.

"We need to establish what happened today," Mahonen said on Wednesday. "Once we have all that information, we will be in a position to comment.”